The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20:21-22)
God Sent His Spirit
Inanimate objects. It’s interesting observing the level of invested interest people give to inanimate objects. We shout at the device that doesn’t operate properly. We delight when that same device operates properly. All the time giving animated attributes to material that, with the best efforts, will still not become animated. It will remain a lifeless object that is of no use until the living and animated give it purpose.
In the beginning, God saw an inanimate object that had been crafted and shaped by the dust of the ground. He had shaped and crafted this fascinating structure. It was lifeless without Him. Then He breathed into the nostrils. And inanimate became animated. Lifeless became life-filled.
After defeating death, Jesus returned to His disciples. And in encountering them for the first time in the resurrected body, He extended wholeness to them. These disciples were men who had been with Him for the other three years. These had been equipped to do great deeds and celebrated their accomplishments with Him. Now, however, as He looked at them and extended His peace, He imparted something to them that was more than an ability to do something in a moment. And He shared a precursor of what they would receive when He ascended, something that had been promised over the centuries from those moved by God’s Spirit.
Later, Paul would write to the church in Ephesus and state that before we received from Jesus in His glorious gospel, we were dead. Dead in trespasses. Lifeless. No better than the devices that we shout at because we were devices used by the prince of the power of the air. And there was nothing we could do about it. And the Father sent the Son, and then, through the gospel, we received His Spirit that made us, who were dead, alive in the Son.
This awesome life-giving Spirit turned enemies into family, turned the dead into living lights, living letters and living lovers keen to express the pure love, light, and letter of the Lord. We can reel off so much of what the Spirit does in and through us for the glory of God. That does not proceed, however, until this same wonderful Spirit turns around the dead and dying destined for uselessness to being alive – truly alive, filled with the kind of life that defeated death and will go on for eternity.
So God sends us the Spirit.
There is a warning from the apostle Paul not to quench the Holy Spirit. That’s an interesting warning for many reasons, but it’s worth noting what we do when we commit that act. We turn off the only source in us that gives us abundant, eternal life – and that’s not just life that we experience on our own, it’s supposed to be life we experience as much when we gather and live out the community life that turns aliens and strangers into a unified family of Father God.
In the same way that the group of disciples received the Spirit and then later a larger group of disciples were filled with the life-giving Spirit, so we as witnesses of what the gospel has done to us, should be keen to let the life that raises us as it raised Jesus to life is shared with others in the hope that they too can receive and be lifted from death to life. That’s something we communicate through our demonstration as well as our declaration. Demonstration of the life-giving Spirit working in us and through us. This life-giving Spirit that lives in us and functions effectively to draw us closer to the Son for the glory of the Father.
As we practice the deliberate attentiveness to the prompting of the life-giving Spirit and celebrate His life in and among us, we can ask and pursue the response to the question …
God, where do you want us to express the wonder of your life-giving Spirit in this situation?
For His Name’s Sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
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